Pakistani city mourns after bomb kills 81

Protests have erupted across Pakistan to demand protection for Shi'ite Muslims after 81 people died in a bomb blast, in the latest of a series of bloody sectarian attacks.

The bomb containing nearly a tonne of explosives, was hidden in a water tanker in a crowded market in Hazara town, a Shi'ite-dominated area on the edge of Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province, on Saturday evening.

Mourners gathered on Sunday as people sifted through the rubble of the explosion, many weeping as they discovered limbs and flesh torn apart by the blast, which wounded 178 people.

Witness Zainab Bibi, 38, said the carnage was "like the day of judgment had come".

"Initially I could not see anything because of a thick cloud of dust but I could hear loud screaming," she told AFP.

The governor of Baluchistan blamed failures by intelligence and security agencies for the attack, saying they were too frightened to deal with groups behind sectarian violence.

Baluchistan has increasingly become a flashpoint for sectarian violence between Pakistan's majority Sunni Muslims and Shi'ites, who account for about a fifth of the country's 180 million people.

Saturday's attack takes the death toll in sectarian attacks in Pakistan this year to almost 200, compared with more than 400 in the whole of 2012 - a year which Human Rights Watch described as the deadliest on record for the country's Shi'ites.

It was the second major attack on Shi'ites in Quetta this year, after a double suicide bombing on a snooker club in the city on January 10 killed at least 92 people, the deadliest ever attack on the community in Pakistan.

More than 1500 Shi'ites took to the streets of the eastern city of Lahore to demand action against the extremists and there were smaller demonstrations in the central city of Multan and Muzaffarabad, the main city of Pakistan-administered Kashmir.

Protests after the January attack prompted Islamabad to sack the provincial government and Azizullah Hazara, chairman of the Hazara Democratic Party, on Sunday gave a 48-hour deadline to authorities to launch operations against the killers.

The banned militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) claimed responsibility for Saturday's attack - as it did for the snooker hall bombing and a February 1 attack on a Shi'ite mosque in northwest Pakistan that killed 24.

There's anger and frustration among Shi'ites at the apparent inability or unwillingness of the authorities to tackle the LeJ.

Activists say the failure of the judiciary to prosecute sectarian killers allows them to operate with impunity.

Baluchistan governor Zulfiqar Magsi pointed the finger at the security forces over the latest atrocity.

"Our security institutions, police, FC (paramilitary Frontier Corps) and others are either scared or cannot take action against them," he told reporters.

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